Canadian insulation brand Roxul is joining the made-in-America ranks. Along with its two existing plants in Milton, Ontario, and Grand Forks, British Columbia, Roxul recently announced the opening of its first U.S. facility in Marshall County, Miss. Roxul manufactures stone wool insulation products. Once running at capacity, the new facility will produce the brand's full line of residential, commercial, industrial, and roof products.

"The support Roxul has received from the community and the state has been terrific," president Trent Ogilvie said of the new southern U.S. location. "We couldn't have found a better place to call home."

Leslie McLaren agrees. "The South represents a great new opportunity for us," says the North American manager of corporate communications. "Stone wool has a relatively small marketshare in North America, but sales are growing and stretching the capacity for our Canadian facilities. Also, our products are big and bulky to ship. To have a facility in the southern U.S. makes sense from a shipping point of view, and for production."

Situated on a 100-acre site about 30 miles south of Memphis, Tenn., the $160 million facility has been under construction for a year. The plant is completing the commissioning phase, and products leaving its doors will be available for sale beginning this week. At full capacity, the 600,000-square-foot plant will employ about 150 people.

Stone wool insulation is known for its moisture resistance, high R-value, and fire resistance. When Roxul entered the U.S. market, Remodeling caught up with them at the International Builders Show and captured this video of the material standing up to a blowtorch.

To create the batt-style insualtion, raw materials including basalt rock and recycled slag are melted together into "molten lava," then spun into a fiber, cooled, and layered into a multidirectional mass. McLaren says the company sources its raw materials locally, so the Mississippi plant's products will have true made-in-America roots. A video of Roxul's stone wool in production is available on the company's website.

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